When you are afraid, you start going into fight or flight mode. Your body starts prioritising what is needed for immediate survival - screw routine body functions, if you don't make it past the next few moments there won't be a routine to return to. You stop digesting food. Cell repair slows or stops. You stop producing saliva, which is why your mouth goes dry when you're nervous just before making a speech or going into a difficult conversation. Your heart rate and breathing increase to ensure better blood flow. A cocktail of hormones like epinephrine and oxytocin are cued up and produced, which amplifies your body's ability to act (and remarkably, in the case of oxytocin, reminds you to seek help).
Don't be mistaken about what happens when you feel fear. Your body is readying itself to help you face what you fear in the way it knows how.
What causes us to feel fear?
1) Fear occurs to us unconsciously. Do you pause to think, hey, very angry looking snake! Maybe I should be scared. Of course not, it would be too late! Fear becomes much clearer when we examine what happens inside your brain. When you are afraid, the fear/anger/aggression/anxiety centre of your brain - the amygdalas (get used to this name, it's gonna keep popping up) lights up. And we've covered all the changes that happen in your body: your blood pressure, your hormones, your heart-rate. But remember how amygdala is like a train interchange with direct routes to different parts of your brain? There is a direct neural link between our amygdala and your pre-frontal cortex, the rational thinking part of your brain. And if we look closely enough or we think things through, sometimes we realise, argh! it's not an angry snake, it's just a prank toy that your annoying friend had thrown at you. Or if you've handled angry snakes enough times, your amygdala does not light as much. Your blood pressure and your heart rate do not increase as much, you realise what you need to do is to stay calm and slowly back away.
Finally, notice how fear, anger, aggression, and anxiety are processed by the same part of the brain, the amygdala. This is no coincidence. These 4 emotions are closely tied to one another; aggression maybe triggered because one is nervous, angry, or fearful. Being fearful may cause one to react angrily, as a self-defense mechanism. Fear, like all our emotions, happens to us. Mostly, we can't control how it originates. But we can control how it develops by understanding what exactly is causing fear and by choosing the response that dispels it
2) We fear what we are unconfident or uncertain about. Think back on your ancestors doing something they weren't confident or certain off - hunting a massive animal without a weapon, or eating a berry they've never seen before. Doing so would mean a very high chance of seriously harming themselves. Today, after many cycles of evolution, we have been wired based on these experiences.
Think about it. Are you ever fearful of something you've done before, and are good? Brushing your teeth, putting on your clothes, indulging in your favourite hobby (whatever it is)? Of course not. You know you can perform these functions easily. You are confident.
But many of us would have felt fearful and anxious the first time we ventured into something new: using a pair of chopsticks, riding a bicycle, swimming, going on a first date. We were uncertain about these functions, and we were not confident about performing them. However, once we have demonstrated to ourselves that we are able to perform these tasks, we are no longer afraid. The same applies to more challenging tasks. Some of us struggle with: public speaking, starting a business, having a very difficult conversation with the CEO... You are uncertain and unconfident if you can succeed. But once you have proven to yourself you are able to do it, even for the more challenging tasks, you are no longer afraid. People might start off feeling scared about public speaking, but after speech 3797, you're pro The catch, of course, is that sometimes, we are too scared to start.
Even if we were certain of something OR confident about something, many of us will still feel some amount of fear. We might be theoretically certain how we should use a pair of chopsticks, but if we have never succeeded in using them properly, we remain unconfident and will still feel nervous if we had to use them, especially when others are observing. You might also be confident about
3) we fear what is painful. Boxer. climbing 100 flights of stairs or doing 100 burpees. But pain is not just physical but mental. Failure is painful. Being judged is painful.
This is why you procrastinate. You either fear what you have to do bevause you don't know how to do it (you don't fear brushing your teeth for example), or you fear doing something becaue you know it will be effortful
4) we fear what we cannot control
Learn more about your amygdala, the amygdala hijack, the thalamus, the pre-frontal cortex, and how your brain works here.
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Summary:
- Fear and anxiety (and anger + aggression) are always
Can food be tastier because it has a better name?
We are all probably familiar with the Chilean sea-bass. We see it on the menus at restaurants. And it's a favourite of both chefs and customers. Just look at that piece of fish.
But have you actually seen what a whole "Chilean Sea-Bass" actually looks like? Well, take a look.
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Gorgeous isn't it? Definitely whets your appetite, no?
The Chilean Sea Bass is not a bass. And most of what we consume isn't even from Chile. Its original name is the Patagonian Toothfish - which is about as bad a name as it gets for fish to be sold at high-end restaurants. An unappetising appearance matched only by an unappetising name. The Patagonian Toothfish enjoyed a blissful existence in its favoured environment of deep and cold waters, unfavoured by the general consumer.
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This was until 1977, when an American fish wholesaler, Lee Lantz, tried the Toothfish in a port in Chile. He loved the buttery soft flesh of the fish, the lack of a fishy smell, and that it could be prepared in a variety of ways.
Lantz immediately understood why the fish was a favoruite of some of the local fishermen, but also why it was a fish that hasn't and would never sell why. People could never get past its name and appearance.
But what if we could change how people thought about and saw the fish? What if he, unlike other fishes, he could avoid presenting the entire fish, just its premium, succulent flesh. And what if he could change the Toothfish's name to a more elegant-sounding "Chilean Seabass"?
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And it worked. For a fish that was barely consumed for most of its existence, consumption would eventually balloon by 40 times by the early-to-mid 1990s. In fact, so much Toothfish (ok sorry, Chilean Seabass) was consumed that it was eventually over-fished, leading to a forced drop in consumption by the mid 2000s.
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There is another example that we will be familiar with.
This fish was originally known as a pilchard, caught off the Cornish coast in England. For many centuries, it sold very well in Europe, because just salting it allowed it to be preserved for a long time, and the taste doesn't change that much even after it's been kept for a long time (It's not great to begin with though).
However, we discovered cooling systems - refrigerators and freezers. And suddenly the demand for the pilchard dropped drastically. People could find better alternatives besides a heavily salted fish, which they could also keep in their fridge.
Enter Nick Howell from Pilchard Works fish supplies. He noticed what you probably notice - the pilchard resembled another fish that was popular around the Mediterranean - the sardine. So Howell renamed the pilchard the Cornish Sardine. Soon he convinced supermarket to buy his "sardines", and eventually even got the EU to award the Cornish Sardine a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status, securing its name and its future.
These 2 examples barely scratch the surface of how context shapes the way we think. The same chocolate tastes sweeter if it comes in a round shape as compared to a cube. The same wine tastes better if it comes in a heavier glass. Seafood tastes better if you can see the sea. The shape, the name, the colour of the food, the music that's playing while you're eating, the plate or cutlery that is used all play a big role in changing our perception of whether something is tasty or not.
All value is perceived value. Which is why marketing not only exists, but is necessary, though sometimes too successful.
The actual value of someone/something tends to be very hard to define. Sometimes, we are frustrated because people misjudge actual values, and it seems impossible to correct this misjudgment no matter how hard or how precisely we try to present or clarify. Moreover, most of the time, actual value can't be changed.
But instead of obsessing over how to accurately assess actual value, we can change how people view something/someone by changing perceived value. When something is presented in a different way, with a different comparison, carrying a different story, or presented by someone else, the perceived value changes, even if actual value remains constant.
For more examples, check out these pages:
- "Did you know that for most of history, Germans refused to eat potatoes?"
- "How much soup is enough for you?
- "The best thing since sliced bread." Well even sliced bread needed advertising.
- Good is not good enough. It needs to be relatively good.
- How much do you love her? Are you sure?